Occult Academy 07

A carpenter that Maya knew when she was younger spots her on her way home and calls her over.

This carpenter turns out to be Ami’s father and he tells her about a story from his work that had something to do with the occult, assuming that she’s still interested in it since he hasn’t seen her in years. Later Ami gets out of the bath and eats watermelon with her father on the porch, they talk about Maya and her father has a plan once he learns that Maya is alone, so they decide to invite her to their house the next day.

Once she gets there she eats rice balls with Ami and Kozue, and Ami starts bringing up stories about Maya when she was younger when Kozue asks about them, further proving that Maya was quite interested in the occult when she was younger. Meanwhile Ami’s father puts the finishing touches on what he’s working on.

At the restaurant where Mikaze works, Fumiaki comes in for his usual dish and sees Smile and JK, he decides to eat with them and JK eyes up his pudding even though he’s already eaten quite a few of them already. Fumiaki gives in and gives it to them but JK spits it all over Smile when a report about crop circles comes up on the news report.

Back at Ami’s house, Maya is watching the same report and decides to head out, she talks with Fumiaki about it and decides to go check it out when Ami’s father pulls up with Ami and Kozue to offer her a ride. On the ride over there Ami asks Maya why she’s interested in the crop circle but she brings up whether it’s safe to be riding on the back of a pickup truck.

Maya meets up with Fumiaki at the site and even though the circle itself isn’t the key it could still related to ufos or aliens that could be related to the key itself, when Fumiaki notices that she’s being more helpful than usual she remembers how Fumiaki’s mother hit him and says that nothings wrong. While Ami’s father sits in his truck he meets Smile and JK who came with Fumiaki and tells them that he still has work for them later, Maya and Fumiaki decide to stake out here later with Ami’s father over hearing them and inviting them both over for dinner.

They have a barbeque while Fumiaki drinks and passes out, followed by some watermelon and fireworks, once everyone is a sleep Ami and her father talk about how Maya could still be the same girl she was when she was younger.

When the time comes they all head over there again and a strange light appears in the sky when they try to photograph it. It suddenly disappearsso they give chase on the back of Ami’s father’s pickup truck bu they still can’t catch it, Ami tells her father to go faster which reminds Maya of when they went sledding and Ami was confident that her father was the best driver in Japan.

They chase it to a farm and have to follow on foot where they find a cow that had become the victim of cattle mutilation however the battery in Maya’s phone is dead. Suddenly their attention is grabbed by the appearance of the same strange light which now appears to be lowering a Grey however when Fumiaki photographs it he sees an older version of JK with three miniature versions of himself that look to be his sons, if the plan Ami’s father had wasn’t already ruined Smile messes up the controls and the others see the truth as well.

They confront him about this and find that Smile and JK made the circle and even though he had tricked them with this plan, he did it all so that Maya could smile again like when she was younger. Maya still doesn’t accept this and gets mad at him which makes Ami slap her for speaking to her father like that and tells her that she might as well hate her father as well. This crosses the line making her father slap her and telling her to apologise, however she doesn’t accept this and runs off. As the sun rises Maya talks with Fumiaki how she thought that all that just happened could have been related to the key but it was all for her.

Next Episode:

Thoughts:

With Kozue’s character having been developed in the last two episodes it looks like we’ll see Ami’s character receive the same treatment. Where so far we’ve learned how important Ami’s father is too her, how Maya was pretty much treated as another member of the family when she was younger, and now something has happened that could break the friendship that Ami and Maya have had for years. Which means that we could learn a bit more about how they became friends when they try to patch things up.

Although I had guessed that Ami’s father was behind the UFO plot from the very start when we saw him working on something, it was still fun to watch it unfold as various things usually associated with UFOs such as the crop circles, cattle mutilation, and greys were referenced. It was also great to see Smile and JK involved in it as well where they were hinted to have helped Ami’s father at the start from the mud on their shoes and they provided some funny scenes like the pudding related stuff with JK and when Smile started hitting him after he did a spit take with the pudding and spat it all other him. In all it was actually kind of touching to see just how far Ami’s father went to try to get Maya to smile like she used to, from creating a crop circle to a UFO chase. However with the date when the aliens are said to attack soon on it’s way it’s understandable that Maya wasn’t touched by this in the slightest, even more understandable that Ami would slap her when she doesn’t know about this. Which could open the way for getting more people in on helping them out if she explains why in order to patch things up.